TakeruK

You can almost always reschedule your visitation weekend. Three years ago, one school even told me that they will only reimburse for the official open house weekend but I was visiting a string of schools close together so I made arrangements to meet with profs and visit the campus on my own anyways. After I made the plans, they said they would reimburse me after all. So, in your case, I would pick one school to visit on the official date and let the other school know that you have a conflict (don't have to say what) and would really like to visit on another day. I guess you have a few options and they come with some risk: 1. Tell both schools that both of them invited you to the same weekend and ask if one of them would be able to reschedule. The positive is that you don't make one school feel like they are lower priority, but the negatives are that giving both of them a choice might result in no action being taken for awhile. If you had a preference, you won't be able to make sure you visit your favoured school on the official date either! 2. Tell your favoured school that you'll attend their weekend and ask the second school to visit on another day/weekend (maybe the Monday/Tuesday right after?). The positive is that I think it's important to meet your potential cohorts because that usually plays a role in helping you decide where to go. Also, going on the official weekend usually means you have more opportunities to learn things about the program. The negative is that the second school might feel that they're not as highly ranked by you. The second school might also not be able to reschedule you (whereas if you had asked both schools, you might have been able to reschedule the first and visit both places). However, I wouldn't worry too much about letting the second school know that you prefer to visit the first school that weekend if that's the truth. 3. Same as option 2, but lie to the second school about the reason (so that they don't know you are choosing to visit the other school over them). Pros and cons are the same as #2 I think, but with the extra negative of the risks inherent to lying. Schools generally know when their main competitors are sending out decisions and doing visits so they might figure it out. Not worth it, in my opinion, but just including for completeness. Last year, I was visiting two schools in the same area and the visits were scheduled for Thurs-Fri on adjacent weeks. I asked if I could visit the first school on the following Mon-Tues instead (so that I visited 2 schools in the same week, with only one "rest day" in between). It worked out because it turns out a few others had asked for the same thing so I was still able to meet a few potential students/colleagues on the alternative visit date. So, if you have no preference on alternate dates, let the school pick them for you because it would be easier for them if you visited with other people needing an alternate date and it would be good for you to meet potential colleagues! Win-win!

I also second the thought that they might be asking to consider whether or not they can submit your application to some (internal) fellowship. I can't really think of many other reasons where the specific % makeup of your ethnicity matters. I say this because fellowships are often funded by individuals or agencies which usually can stipulate things like "this fellowship is for someone with at least 25% of X ethnicity" etc. I don't think departments usually worry about that level of precision if they are looking to have a diverse cohort!

Just wanted to add my experience here for any other Canadians looking to go to the US. If you get a higher level NSERC PhD award, you have to decline it and accept the lowest tier ($21k/year) in order to take it outside of Canada. Like Usmivka said, this is very small compared to the actual cost of a graduate student. Many Canadian schools generally increase your funding package if you have an external award like NSERC, so I did ask my US school about this and they basically said that sorry, although they are appreciative of the fact that I was able to bring in outside sources, it really makes very little difference. My immigration paperwork has to list how much the school has to pay (including overheads and other stuff) to have me as a student. It's over $100k/year, so the $21k from NSERC isn't going to make a huge difference. Just to provide some numbers to support what Usmivka said above! Also to add to more "behind the scenes" about international admits: at my last school (Canadian though), I was part of a department meeting where the faculty had to make a decision about the increase of international applicants and how to fund them. Grad students cannot vote at these meetings but they are allowed to attend for informational purposes. At that school, an international student requires twice as much funding as a domestic student. For all students, some fraction of the funding comes from the University (internal fellowships), some from the Department (fellowships and TAships) and a considerable fraction comes from the supervisor (RAships). The Graduate School also provides funding for a small number of International students (only half as many International students as the department would like to have) so they had to vote on whether to (1) stop admitting international students for several years (and continue to operate at a deficit) until the number of international students dropped below the quota, or (2) to decrease the Departmental contribution to the International students' funding and replace it with a Supervisor contribution, or (3) for all faculty members to agree to increase their contribution to ALL of their own students (domestic and international), thereby freeing up some department funding to offset the increased cost of funding international students. After some debate, they almost unanimously voted for the last option, where all profs basically agreed to pool some of their money together to not turn away international students (which was the outcome I was hoping for, although it did not affect me in any way). My point though, is that international student funding is a very complicated issue that requires a lot of people (with potentially differing priorities and funding resources) to work together. If my old department was not as cooperative, the majority of the cost of future international students would be the responsibility of their supervisor, which makes it very difficult for any one prof to take on. I would imagine that in departments that would have voted for option (2), the bar is considerably higher for international students. Some departments might not have the financial ability to choose option (3) even. I spoke with some of the faculty members who had worked in US schools in the past, and they said that the overhead costs for international students in the US is even greater than in Canada. So while an international student was twice the cost at my old school, the prof told me that at his old school, a grad student can estimate their true cost to the department by multiplying their stipend by a factor of 3 or 4 (for both pubic and private schools). Just expanding on my last post and sharing what I know "behind the scenes" of international admissions, for those interested

I think it's good manners -- just keep it short and write it in a way so that they don't feel the need to respond (unless you want to follow up on something). Also, don't forget to thank the great admin staff people that probably put the schedule together, made the appointments, process/help you fill out your expense report, and maybe even helped you make the travel plans!

The faculty and students in my program have also talked about how grades are not important. I've talked to many senior PhD students at multiple schools that are applying to post-doc positions. Only one of them had to submit their transcript to one job competition -- no one will even see your other grades. However, grades are important in the early stages -- e.g. applying for competitive fellowships. Also, as a first year grad student, we might not have much research background, so the only thing they can really compare all of us is using GPAs. Over time, as we grow into senior grad students, people will stop talking about our courses and more about our research. I think you have the right approach towards balance coursework and research and I'm trying to do the same too! It's definitely easier said than done -- I thought that after 2 years of grad school before this PhD would make it much easier to focus on research more and care about grades less. But my MSc program was very course-light (4 courses in 2 years) while this program (and all US programs) are very course-heavy (9 courses this year), so I occasionally find myself slipping into my undergrad mindset again and spending too much time on homework/courses. But I think we will all learn to switch mindsets, hopefully sooner rather than later!

Do you mean potentially more scholarships or fellowships in this year, or in future years? Usually the admission offer letter is indeed the final offer of funding. If you are still in the running for other fellowships, they would have let you know. You can still get more funding potentially, if you have external fellowships (but ask them how it affects the funding -- some schools will just take away internal fellowships if you get external ones). Usually they are pretty vague when asked about this, mostly just saying "you won't get any less than if you didn't take the fellowship". Also, sometimes these fellowships are just because they want to entice you or acknowledge a sponsor. For example, I know some schools will fund all their students $X/year, no matter what. However, the top students get a fellowship of the same value (named after whatever donor/sponsor/funding agency) while the others just get it as a general stipend. It's still a good thing since it shows you are in the top level and having named fellowships on a CV can help you win future awards. As for future years, you can probably still apply to external fellowships that might be worth more in the future -- usually most awards say you are eligible in the first year (or two) of graduate studies and there are also some awards for senior students. For internal awards, I usually don't see very many internal awards for older grad students, but you should check the school's financial office pages for details.

Agree with what Eigen said about the correlation between fellowship nomination and acceptance! Congrats To answer your other question -- at my MSc school, I was nominated for an internal fellowship at some point in May (they asked me for additional details in early May) and I found out the results in early August. This might be a bit different because all of this happened much after I accepted their offer and the fellowship did not change my overall funding package (just changed the source of the funding from the department to the graduate school). So if it's a University-wide competition that's meant for people who are accepted already, then it might take them awhile. However, if they are hoping that you will win this fellowship so that they can increase your offer to entice you to come, then you can probably expect it to happen more quickly! For some of my schools, the letter of offer listed several funding scenarios depending on the result of some internal and external fellowship results!

This really helps, but one major issue is that as a non-American, we may not be eligible for a lot of funding that domestic students can apply for. In addition, some schools, especially public ones, charge higher tuition to international students (because American people pay taxes which subsidize the tuition for domestic students). Since programs generally pay tuition for their PhD students, this translates to a higher cost to the prof/department to take in an international grad student. Thus, they want to really make sure they have a great student if they are taking an international student -- the risk is higher! I think this is the main reason why the bar is higher for international students.

No, it's not your problem if your employer isn't providing you with more work Sometimes I feel like I am not "earning my keep" when I get the easier TA assignments etc. but after awhile, I realise that overall, the University definitely "wins" in terms of the amount of work/productivity they get out of us versus what they provide for us in the end. So I say enjoy the freedom/lessened workload while you still can, and make the most of it (e.g. doing your readings etc.). However, if you want to gain research or teaching experience, maybe you can talk to whomever creates the GTRA assignments and try to make sure you get something where you can develop the skills you want to have for the future (if teaching/research is what you want to do in the future).

I think just knowing that you "will get funding" is not enough. You're in a STEM field, so you should expect a full tuition waiver and a stipend you can live comfortably off. If they are not offering you that, then compared to other STEM field PhD students, you are getting the short end of the stick! However, it's still early in the season and they aren't asking you to decide without a funding package offer, right? For now, enjoy the fact that you got in and are one of the top applicants! Congrats! I would really recommend waiting to know the exact value of all your funding packages before making any decision though! I found that the funding packages varied wildly -- my highest offer was double that of the lowest one and the amount of TA work per week ranged from 5 to 20! There was no correlation between the amount of work required and the value of the package too. So I would not just be happy with a funding package that said "you will get a TAship". Make sure you know how much the total value of your package is!

I think the opinion of your character will influence the selection process, and it's not just the other students' opinions. You will be meeting lots of profs as well and their opinion probably counts even more! I don't understand why you think you need a very different strategy (if I understood your post correctly) to interact with the other students compared to your interactions with the faculty. When it comes to research related topics, faculty members, post-docs, and graduate students do not act very differently, from my experience. In discussion groups and seminars, all three groups will tend to discuss the science/research as peers and colleagues. I also think research at the graduate level and beyond is very very specialized. So, the foremost expert in the room will be the person who is currently working on that topic -- it might be a graduate student, a post-doc, or a faculty member. I know that most profs will expect their PhD students to know way more about their thesis topic than themselves. In addition, at the grad school level, most students will start to specialize. For example, during my MSc, I was studying the Physics GRE in order to apply to PhD programs and I started a study group, mostly with other undergrads. These undergrads knew way more physics than I did! This didn't surprise me (in fact, I was counting on it) because they are still learning Physics while my grad coursework had become much more specialized. In many PhD programs, the first couple of years might have broad coursework to build a foundation in the field, but most of the topics are not directly useful to one's research the further along you go. I think it's a bit presumptuous to make the blanket statement that you will know more about "their discipline" than the current grad students. Except for the new students, each grad student has probably dedicated a good chunk of their lives studying something very specific. So it's probably not likely that you will know more about every one of these topics. However, I'm also confused about your expectations of what you think you should "behave like". I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "amicable undergraduate", but I definitely do not expect visiting prospective students to be completely oblivious to their field. In fact, I would expect them to probably know at least the same general stuff as me (since most undergrad core curricula are similar), if not more (since I am further removed from it than them). I would also expect them to have a lot of knowledge about the topic they are interested in studying. When we sit down to discuss what they are working on, I hope that I would learn something cool about their work. Again, I am not sure what you mean about the role of an "amicable undergraduate". You are definitely not expected to "play dumb" or "hide your knowledge of the field" or whatever to appease the graduate students (why would we want that? we want to see smart, clever, and motivated people as our future colleagues). Being friendly is really all that is important. I think most people would like to work with people that they would really "mesh" with or get along with, but in academia, there's no shortage of people who might be less extroverted/more introverted. So you don't have to fake it as a bubbly, excited, happy all the time person. Just be yourself and be friendly. However, it also sounds like you feel like you have a certain personality and you don't want to change it. This is fine, one of the purposes of the visits is for both you and the current department to decide if you will get along or not. When you visit, you will probably quickly get a sense whether or not you will get along with these people for the next 5+ years or not. I think this is an important part of the decision on where to go -- you want to pick a school that fits you both research-wise and personality-wise. I might be worried about what you mean by "unempathetic". To me, this means that you are describing yourself as someone who doesn't care about the thoughts/feelings of others in your actions (but maybe I understand this wrongly). For me, the sense of community is very important in grad school because it's a time that is very stressful and can also be very emotionally draining. So, for me, this would be a negative trait / a red flag. But every department is made up of a lot of different people with different attitudes so I don't expect everyone to be a friend, nor should you need to worry about being close with everyone! Just be yourself and find the department that fits you the best

IF this is a US school, then I think this is atypical and I would be vary of this situation. I am guessing they are asking you for an early response because funding might depend on how many students say yes. So they might be "bullying" students into making a quick decision. Or, their funding decision might be based on who wants to hire whom as an RA/TA, so you might have to interview or apply for this later on. It does sound like they are trying to circumvent the CGS agreement regarding April 15 deadlines by not making a funding offer (as the CGS agreement clearly states it applies to funding offers only, not offers of admission). In either case, this is a bad deal! Since you, like most people, say that you don't want to accept without knowing funding, then you should tell the school exactly that. Tell them that you are honoured etc. to be accepted by their school but you can't make any decisions without knowing funding. You should also directly ask if the decision is binding, although I do not think accepting admission is a legally binding agreement. A student without a financial package can withdraw from their program at any time (although they might forfeit any fees paid for the current year/semester/quarter). So, you can probably accept the offer, see what the funding this, and then change your mind. It's not a good idea to do this in general, but if they are forcing your hand by making you decide before most schools even get back with decisions, then I think this is okay to do. In your shoes, I would even ask the grad director what would happen if you changed your mind because you don't like the funding package. It's possible that they are just hoping applicants will respond by Jan 31 so that they know who really wants to attend and who applied as a safety. I think this is a bad practice but it's their right to run their school this way (I hope though, that this will have negative ramifications on their enrollment). So, if you ask for more time, they might just give it to you. On the other hand, if this is not a US school, then this might be more typical. Many Canadian programs give you about 1 month after notice to accept/decline (in Canadian science programs, usually the prof hires/admits the student directly so they don't want you holding onto an offer forever when there are other students they are interested in as well.) But if you have a valid reason, you can usually ask for more time (e.g. you know that School X won't decide for another 2 weeks so you want to hear back from them first). Sometimes in these situations, you can even contact the other school, let them know your situation and they might expedite your decision.

Yes, unfortunately, in general you do have to submit transcripts twice. For most applications, "electronic" submission (i.e. unofficial) is good enough for them to judge your application. But after you are admitted, they need real, official, sealed transcripts to officially state that you've indeed finished your program etc. For most people, they are still taking the last courses to finish up their BSc/BA this semester, so it will take until June or so before their transcripts show all of their courses. What you could do is ask what they really need by "electronic" transcripts. Sometimes, a school will accept a "screenshot" of your grades as listed on your school's student online record system. In addition, most schools will allow you to download an unofficial copy (PDF) of your transcript through the online student system. If you're using google chrome, you can "print" any webpage and choose "Save to PDF" instead of a printer to turn any page into a PDF. There are also some web tools that will do this for you too (google "Print Friendly" for example). Just out of curiosity, what province are you applying from? I actually have never heard of a provincial database of transcripts before! Sounds like it can be pretty convenient this way. For all of my transcripts, I had to order them from the school directly and one of them only accepted requests by fax or snail mail . I had to get transcripts from 3 schools in 2 provinces so I understand your frustration!

At one school I visited, the visiting students were put up in a nearby hotel so we would be roommates with our future cohort mates. However, I also had a really good friend (who was also a student at the school too) so I requested to stay with my friend instead, in order to save the school some money. In return, the school increased the amount of travel support by $100 (which was needed to pay for the "International" flight). This visit was a Thursday-Friday but I chose to stay a few extra days with my friend whom I hadn't seen for a really long time! (Obviously, that part of the visit was on my own dime though!). At another school, they originally planned for me to stay with a current grad student. However, since my spouse was travelling with me, we preferred to have our own lodging, so we stayed at a hotel in town instead. Using my spouse's employee benefits, we were able to get a very discounted rate, and since our total cost was still under the maximum travel support, the school agreed to pay for that too. When applying for MSc programs 2 years ago, I visited the schools during my undergrad midterm break and I spent 3 days at each school -- one visiting the department and two visiting the city (looking at things we'd do for fun as well as potential places to live etc.). The schools were very accommodating, even offering to give advice and arrange for current students to show us around. One school even paid for the 2 extra hotel nights. Overall, I don't think it's "bad form" to schedule additional personal activities before or after the scheduled interview/visit dates. Obviously, it would be very bad form to skip scheduled activities to do your own thing though!! I would also say it's probably better to stay with the grad student for the Thursday evening (the student might be the one meeting you at the airport after all) and give the school your full attention on Friday. Maybe it would be best to meet your friend after the lab dinner on Friday and then spend some time with them. If possible, you can always schedule your flight home for Saturday night or Sunday (or even later) so that you can focus on the school stuff on Friday and then have the weekend to spend with your friend! However, if you are not comfortable staying on someone's couch etc. then it's perfectly okay to state your preference for staying with your friend (or arranging your own private lodging). When you bring up things like this, I would always mention that you will be paying for these extras on your own dime, but usually they will offer to pay for what they can. If you are applying to a good school, they should understand that not everyone wants to stay with random strangers and that they should not hold it against you if you don't want to do that.

I took pictures for a similar reason, ACM88. My wife wasn't able to visit all of the schools with me and so I took pictures to help her get a sense of what each place was like!

This sounds like "z-score" or "standard-score", where the "z-score" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score) is usually calculated by: (Raw score - average score) / standard deviation This sounds like what your prof did (even though you didn't specify the subtracting off the mean, it's hard to tell without knowing how everything is calculated). This is a useful statistic because it tells you how well you did compared to the rest of the class. For example, if your "z-score is +1 then it means you are 1 standard deviation above the class, which is basically the top 68th percentile, if you assume the scores are normally distributed. So it sounds like what your prof did is not only weighting "A" less than "B" and "C", but also giving lower weights to parts where the class did well (i.e. easier) compared to harder parts. That is, if you got 90% in the section where the average was 60%, that would be worth more to your grade than getting 90% in a section where the average was 80%. The formula you give does not scale grades at all -- it simply makes some section worth more than others and your score is unaffected by the performance of others. Overall, scaling is a controversial practice and there is no "right" or "wrong" way to scale marks -- profs can use different schemes depending on what they want to achieve. I think the real question is whether or not grades should scaled at all, and whether or not the assumptions that go into the scaling algorithms are reasonable!

Taking pictures with your phone would be really good and less distracting, but during visits last year, my phone didn't have the ability to take pictures!

Many schools have student health plans (for undergrads and graduate students). They are often called "Student Health Insurance Plan" and abbreviated SHIP so that's a good place to start searching! These are usually heavily subsidized health plans -- e.g. I pay $500 per year for the health plan at my school!

You might not even have to choose. Last year, I rescheduled one school's visit to be the week afterwards so that I can visit two schools in a row. I didn't even have a conflict on the first visit date -- I just didn't want to fly across the continent, then back home for 2 days, then back again. It saves money for myself and both schools so they were happy to agree with my change of plans. It sounds like interviews might be harder to reschedule, so maybe you should ask the school that already accepted you if you could visit on a different date. With enough advance notice, they should be able to figure something out!

In my experience, no, it is not normal for schools to decide on official acceptance BEFORE deciding on funding. I don't know if this is true universally, or just with my field. But usually, the number of students they can take depends on the number of students they can fund so the two decisions are made together. Some exceptions could be: 1. The school won't know about funding for a few more weeks (it's still early in the season) but they want to let their students know the good news early. However, the school would unofficially accept you and say that an official letter will come with more details once the funding is sorted out. That is, it's very unusual for an official letter to not containing funding information since that letter is basically a "contract" and I have used my admission letter to prove to e.g. landlords that I do have an income source! 2. The official letter could promise only the standard amount of funding and they might say that they would like to nominate you for an internal fellowship, which might raise your funding by X. In addition, the official letter of acceptance usually comes with instructions for you to accept or decline the admission offer. If you haven't gotten that yet, you might not actually have received the final official admission letter with all of the information. In any case, I would suggest you follow up next week and find out the funding information!

They usually tell you about the program requirements (e.g. when do you do your orals/other exams, funding structure, courses, etc.) as well as things like whether or not they have things like lab rotations, or if you do mostly courses in first year, or if it's a mix etc. They might also tell you about an upcoming visit weekend and how to make those arrangements and answer any questions you might have! Congrats!

I actually don't think it's too early to inquire but it might be too early to expect them to answer right away. Schools cannot expect students to accept their offer without knowing the funding though, so it doesn't make sense to say that they can't send out funding information until they know how many have accepted! (Not saying that it doesn't happen, but it shouldn't!) At the first possible chance, I would definitely ask about funding information. In most places that accepted me, they quickly set up a one-on-one meeting with me and someone from the department (via phone or Skype) so that they can tell me about their program and allow me to ask questions. If you get this opportunity, it would be the right time to ask about funding. If a week goes by and you still don't hear any more information about anything, it would be a good idea to ask your advisor assigned to you if you could chat about the school. However, what might have happened is that the official invite came out while your assigned advisor is very busy or away so they might not have had a chance to get in touch with you yet. You don't have to be making any decisions soon, so it won't hurt to wait until, say, Monday or Tuesday before asking to talk to someone at the school. However, you should expect the school to give you the funding info before they want you to say yes or no!! Edit: You should also get the funding info IN WRITING after they tell you. It's weird that the official letter didn't include it!

I took a few pictures of the campuses I visited. I didn't do the whole "tourist" thing with a camera hanging around my neck etc. But I had a digital camera in my pocket and I took pictures when it was appropriate. I didn't do it during "official" events like talks, or interviews, or social gatherings (I generally don't take pictures of people I don't know well though). But I took plenty of pictures of the campus and the surrounding areas during my own time.

I don't think my "virtual" lives are "less real" than my real life. My reaction to e.g. a YouTube video, a blog post, or a GC thread is "real" and I think it's the same as the feelings/reactions from reading a good book, or watching a good movie, or feeling inspired by a great talk/seminar. When I'm on the Internet/virtual world, I don't feel like I'm "escaping" and putting my real life "on hold" while I entertain myself. Instead, it's just another way to interact with the world around us, in my opinion. For example, I can walk down the hall and ask my cohorts what they thought about the problem set we're working on, or make plans for dinner tonight etc. Or, I can shoot them a quick gmail chat message asking the same thing. Or I can pull out my phone and text them. Or email them. Or call them. In my mind, they are all equivalently "real interactions" -- the only difference is the medium. Of course, some things are easier to plan via one medium or another -- for example, I usually walk down the hall when I want to discuss science/homework since writing text is very limiting! Maybe I feel this way because I don't think there is a real division between when I'm online and when I'm not. I work most of the day on the computer and connected to others. When I go home, I am often on the computer -- it's where I get my entertainment. My wife and I pay for internet video services instead of cable TV for example. We also read stuff (news, interesting articles etc.) online and we would often discuss the stuff we read with each other with computers on our lap or next to us. If we wonder e.g. "is that guy in this tv show really the same as <kid in older movie>", we just pull out our phones or computers and look it up. I really enjoy the feeling that I can access almost any piece of information with little more effort than pulling out a book on my bookshelf and flipping to a page. Or make contact with a friend from across the continent/world with less effort than trying to figure out international calling codes. The "virtual" world is just another medium of doing "real world" communication to me. In fact, for communicating with people I don't know personally (e.g. banks, businesses etc.), it is my preferred method! Some people also talk about the distinction between the "real" and "virtual" world because the Internet/"virtual" world allows for anonymity. I try to not be a different person online compared to in "real life" but I don't think that's exactly true. But I don't think one "version" of me is more real than the other. The main differences in the way I act is because of the medium, I think. On Facebook, email, or GC, everything I say (write) is recorded pretty much forever. I always keep this in mind when writing anything down so I might restrain myself a little bit. So maybe people who interact with me mostly in real life will have a different perception of me than someone who mostly talks to me online. On the other hand, I am not always able to properly pronounce every word and I feel I can express things much more clearly in writing than verbally. So, in "real life" interactions, sometimes I don't express everything I am thinking (either because I don't think I can properly do it, or because I tried but did not make sense). I think most people act differently towards different groups of people in real life (e.g. employers, parents, childhood friends, etc.) and I view my slightly different online/"real life" personalities as an extension of this. I would like to think that anyone who knows me well online or in real life would see overwhelming similarities and only small differences.

I think someone has to hit some button to make the status change from submitted to in review, and some departments might not bother? For many schools, the status stayed at "submitted" for a long time and then changed to "declined" or "rejected" or "accepted" with no in-between. Sometimes the official change takes awhile, so for at least one school, I got an email rejection. Then, a few days later, it was followed by an official/automated email from the School of Graduate Studies informing me that my application status has changed and that I should log into the system to see the updated status. Yay, it's super fun being rejected twice (although that's what I was expecting to see)! On the other hand, one school had super detailed status levels, like "application received", "application processed" (meaning that all information was complete), "under department review" etc. etc. They even had to provide a pop up menu describing exactly what each line meant. Overkill! Also, sometimes the online status things are not 100% accurate. One school said that it was still "awaiting official transcripts" from one of my former schools although other transcripts were marked as "received". After 1 week, I asked the school about it and they said that they did receive that transcript, however, my names did not match 100% so the computer system didn't flag it as "received". But they assured me that the actual transcript was attached to my application and the department had it. They never changed the status! So, obviously you should follow up on any anomalous status, but sometimes the online status things are not very accurate/useful!